Mystic Braves
Desert Island

It was difficult to understand where Julian Ducatenzeile, vocalist and founder of the Mystic Braves, a garage/surf band from San Diego, was when composing their second album, Desert Island. Probably in a remote location far from all the crowds and chaos. That faraway, almost unreachable place, sometimes not even traversed in entire lifetimes, that endless pilgrimage without ever finding the boundaries of the soul.

So deep is his logos…

Moreover, that place also hosted a costume party that night, and before playing with his mystical pirates, Julian loved to go there to find inspiration in that San Diego bay forest, slowly parking the black limousine shadowed by the dense trees. He enjoyed silently walking through the woods, observing those strange and restless monkeys jumping from tree to tree for no reason. Until he reached the top in that flat expanse, with the cliff close to the sea, a gentle breeze bringing relief to his heated forehead, and that late Hellenic landscape taking his breath away. Overlooking the bay, those ancient classical statues, eroded by wind and salt, with that immortal marble marked by time, an eternal silence dominated the scene and suspended desire. In that moment, the vision of those statues and the fleeting suspended memory of that unconscious awareness, of the understanding of the origin and end of everything, in the middle we frolic with all our extended families. Even though in the initial plan we were born to be sparkling with light, to be light and weightless, practically semigods inflamed with love.

But let's allow that metaphysics to envelop us even just for one reckless and unconscious night, accompanied by the timeless surf rhythms and psych pop ballads of these brave mystics. A costume party on a desert island is not an everyday thing, a beautiful girl dressed as Uma Thurman notices us sparkling in the queue at the party entrance and tells us that she is recently widowed and wants to have fun tonight. A guy dressed as Ray Manzarek asks if we've met before, and another with a Colin Blunstone mask pleads if we can give him a ride at the end... and we're already at a good point because we're in the presence of a finally faceless crowd, even more fascinating than usual. At this point, we only need silver cats and emerald mice to hit a home run. And while a flock of beauties in masks surrounded a guy with great speaking skills and a flaming Jim Morrison mask, Julian opens the dances with that little baroque pop gem Bright Blue Day Haze, and it's all a triumph of raised hands and liberated spirits. The threat is gently postponed by that fantastic opening track, with those multi-layered surf/funk & paisley pop guitars overwhelmed by waves and sandy blasts of a Gibson G-101 organ reminiscent of Manzarek. And the party dissolves into that mystical psych of ours, in that mind rewiring, where pop migrates towards jazz and avant-garde with all that instrumental melee of mellotron and fuzz box, with the title track making us vibrate towards mariachi orientations. In this city derby with the Allah-Las twins, however, nothing is won, we dance and sweat anonymously, we set the time, the senses are the spheres of the clock: the balance wheel was brought to the beach and time is no more.

Oh, how much these mystics know. Could it be true that the detached soul swims in the sea of joy?
And that night, with their music, they swam in the sea of flowing divine delights, and they felt no joy because they were joy themselves...